Audio

So far this week Air Cascadia has made its way through the thickets and the brambles, torn in all directions and scared before the blood has dried.
Here are a few quotes:
1, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in the US to argue against a possible nuclear deal with Iran. Netanyahu says the deal would be inadequate to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear bomb He is due to give a speech in Congress on Tuesday which was not agreed in advance with the Obama administration, angering the White House. The speech comes two weeks before Israeli elections, with his Likud party under pressure in domestic polls. The US and other powers - the so-called P5+1 - are negotiating with Iran on its nuclear programme. They want a framework agreement by the end of the month which addresses concerns that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons technology, something Tehran denies.
2, A Union Pacific freight train derailed Monday morning, sending five railcars off the tracks near Oakridge.Of the five cars, only one remained upright during the incident at 4:10 a.m. in an isolated area of the Cascade Range, according to Union Pacific spokesman Francisco Castillo. Only two of the derailed cars were loaded, he said. No one was hurt and no hazardous materials were involved. .Seven other freight trains were delayed as a result of the accident. .The accident damaged 86 feet of rail, 10 to 20 railroad ties, a signal and a train detector, as well as clips and tie plates, said Castillo, who did not immediately have a cost estimate for the repairs.
Across the state, another train derailed Monday near Meacham in Umatilla County.

3, The City of Cleveland claims that 12-year-old Tamir Rice was responsible for his own death by police shooting. If it’s too hard to believe, you can read the article yourself.
This is not a tragedy. This is not tragedy that needs healing and closure. It is racialized murder coming from political leadership in suits and uniforms with straight faces. And oh let us demand of each other that we refuse to slide into some kind of purgatory of bloggy snarkiness over this. There is no witty comment that survives this. We can't drink, have sex, make money - to head-fake our way out of this.

4, While the U.S. government has continued a policy with Israel of neither confirming nor denying the existence of Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal since the Nixon administration, a researcher has just obtained release of U.S. government documents "detailing the U.S. government's extensive help to Israel in that nation's development of a nuclear bomb," reports Courthouse News. Courthouse News continues: "The government fought to delay release of the 386-page report in hearings before Judge Tanya Chutkan in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who expressed skepticism with the government's reasons for refusing to provide a single unclassified document.

5, James Risen made it clear that he was quite prepared to go to jail before he would reveal his sources for the story. Given the importance of the information he reported to the American public, he should be considered a hero — someone who is ready to go to prison to be able to provide information that enables them to know what their government is doing in their name, with their taxpayer money.Needless to say, Mr. Risen’s position in this case also made him a hero to American journalists and their colleagues around the world. He was a champion of freedom of the press, who also made it possible for American journalists to continue to offer their sources a credible promise of confidentiality when they provided a journalist information the public ought to have.

6, This item takes us back a few weeks, but not enough to make a difference in the zeitgeist…More than five years after the single-payer system was scrapped from ObamaCare policy debates, just over 50 percent of people say they still support the idea, including one-quarter of Republicans, according to a new poll.The single-payer option – also known as Medicare for all – would create a new, government-run insurance program to replace private coverage. The system, once backed by President Obama, became one of the biggest casualties of the divisive healthcare debates of 2009.The idea remains extremely popular among Democrats, with nearly 80 percent in support, according to the poll, which was shared first with The Hill by the Progressive Change Institute.

7, The Vermont Workers’ Center and the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative say single payer health care could still be on the table.Building off the financing plan that Gov. Peter Shumlin used in deciding not to proceed with single payer, the study, published in February, says the state can use progressive tax structures to provide a universal program by 2017.The plan would give medical, dental and vision coverage for all Vermont residents, but would exclude those who work in Vermont but commute from other states.

The City of Cleveland claims that 12-year-old Tamir Rice was responsible for his own death by police shooting. If it’s too hard to believe, you can read the article yourself.
I urge activists who live in their isolated outposts called "issues" - including those of us who reside within issues that we think include all the others, the big ones like Peace activism and Environmental activism, to understand that state-sanctioned violent insanity of the kind we see with Tamir Rice is a death gene that is in each of our bodies now.
This is not a tragedy. This is not tragedy that needs healing and closure. It is racialized murder coming from political leadership in suits and uniforms with straight faces. And oh let us demand of each other that we refuse to slide into some kind of purgatory of bloggy snarkiness over this. There is no witty comment that survives this. We can't drink, have sex, make money - to head-fake our way out of this.
We must reclaim our last goodness for this, as ripped and shredded as it might be. We can't possibly be free of this as long as it exists, and it is a flourishing killer, expanding in our bizarro reversed-out morality. This militarized-and-marketed racism is designed to seamlessly merge with all the old verities like "freedom" and "security" and "prosperity." Certainly no American can say that this is not central to their work if they are dedicated to health, to democracy, to growing loving communities.
Racism kills people, yes. Racism kills a 12 year old with a toy gun in a playground and slams his sorrowing big sister to the ground and handcuffs her but racism just as surely kills a smartly dressed hipster a thousand miles away living on save-the-world foundation grants. Racism kills all the good causes and so it has become the only progressive cause at this time in our history. Racism is the only issue until we are killed by it or we are free of it and we are all free.

Today's guest, William
Binney is a former high-level National Security Agency intelligence official who, after his 2001 retirement after 30 years, blew the whistle on NSA surveillance programs. His outspoken criticism of the NSA during the George W. Bush administration made him the subject of FBI investigations that included a raid on his home in 2007. Even before Edward Snowden’s NSA whistleblowing, Binney publicly revealed that NSA had access to telecommunications companies’ domestic and international billing records, and that since 9/11 the agency has intercepted some 15 to 20 trillion communications. Snowden has said: "I have tremendous respect for Binney, who did everything he could according to the rules."

This from The Intercept. Look carefully in the darkest corners of the distant cupboards. There is so much more than dust in there...

The Intercept is reporting: "American and British spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

"The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.

"The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. The company operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities. One of its three global headquarters is in Austin, Texas and it has a large factory in Pennsylvania.

I am writing you with a number of further concerns about Cuyahoga County Magistrate David M. Mills. What I have uncovered in the intervening time between our first email exchange has led me to question his fitness for his position.

David M. Mills, prior to ascending to a position of magistrate at Cuyahoga County Court, was a "dead beat Dad." Followng the divorce to his first wife, Katherine Mills, she appealed to the court on several occasions to have him compelled to pay child support for their sole child. The support requirements were a mere $70 a month, hardly backbreaking. One must question how an individual with this history could possibly be considered fit for a family court assignment. I understand that Mills has climbed the ladder at Cuyahoga Court and is now in a directorial position.

In addition, questions remain unresolved about his financial affairs. Two loans taken out on property--- the house shared with his second wife, Pamela Sabo, do not appear to be satisfied.

Here are the AFN numbers of concern: 00641399; 00429489
If you have other input concerning these transactions I would appreciate being so alerted.
There are growing concerns in several sectors that judges are using home loans to receive inappropriate monies; ie money laundering. It is my understanding that a federal lawsuit is brewing, naming judges in a number of jurisdictions as involved in this scheme. Given these issues, Mills' loan history is of concern.

I am also wondering what happened to the foreclosure case. I see where both Mills and his ex-wife, Katherine, were served with foreclosure notice. I see then where Katherine filed for bankruptcy, which derailed the foreclosure, then shortly thereafter canceled her bankruptcy case. I am wondering how the over $30,000 owed on the property was subsequently paid.

During his tenure on the bench in Cuyahoga County, Mills also represented several parties in both Cuyahoga and also in Lorain County. I understand that you are alleging that he received no compensation for these cases. We will need to set up an arrangement wherein his financial records for the relevant time periods are opened up for review.
Parenthetically, I also see where Mills was subject to several civil rights lawsuits. Strangely, these suits were never heard but were quickly dismissed by other judges, who may have been in a position to try to protect Mills.

The Institute for Public Accuracy shares this with me and I want to share it with you. More importantly, please share it with others:

On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch released a statement: "Israel: Dangerous Ruling in Rachel Corrie Case" about "Israel’s Supreme Court on February 12, 2015, exempt[ing] the Israeli defense ministry from liability for actions by its forces..."

Cindy and Craig are the parents of Rachel Corrie, who was killed in 2003 by Israeli troops in Gaza with a bulldozer while she was attempting to protect a Palestinian home from being demolished. Together, Cindy and Craig founded Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice. They issued a statement after the court ruling: "The Supreme Court decision ignores international law arguments regarding the protection of civilians and human rights defenders in armed conflict and grossly violates the internationally recognized right to effective remedy. ... Rachel’s case provides yet another example of how the Israeli justice system is failing to provide accountability."

###

From the Did You Know That You Knew Desk:
The truth about Israel's Nuclear arsenal is in the air...just as Israel beatss it's little drum for Big War in the Middle East. It may not be going too far to suggest that the presence of Israel in the region is the reason for the burgoning conflict.
So here's the word on the US's complicity in building up Israel's nuclear arsenal way back there in the Ancient Eighties:

Courthouse News reports: "In the midst of controversy over the Israeli prime minister's plans to address Congress next month, a researcher has won the release of a decades-old Defense Department report detailing the U.S. government's extensive help to Israel in that nation's development of a nuclear bomb.

"'I am struck by the degree of cooperation on specialized war making devices between Israel and the U.S.,' said Roger Mattson, a former member of the Atomic Energy Commission technical staff.

"The 1987 report, 'Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations,' compares the key Israeli facilities developing nuclear weapons to Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories, the principal U.S. laboratories that developed the bomb for the United States.

"The tightly held report notes that the Israelis are 'developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level.'

"The release comes after Grant Smith, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy filed a FOIA request last year and followed with a lawsuit in September seeking to compel release of the report.

"The government fought to delay release of the 386-page report in hearings before Judge Tanya Chutkan in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who expressed skepticism with the government's reasons for refusing to provide a single unclassified document.

"The report's release this week has substantial political ramifications."

Smith wrote the piece "U.S. Confirmed Existence of Israeli H-Bomb Program in 1987," which states: "The 1987 report’s confirmation of Israel’s advanced nuclear weapons program should have immediately triggered a cutoff in all U.S. aid to Israel under the Symington and Glenn Amendments to the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act. ...

"Informal and Freedom of Information Act release of such information is rare. Under two known gag orders -- punishable by imprisonment -- U.S. security-cleared government agency employees and contractors may not disclose that Israel has a nuclear weapons program. GEN-16 is a 'no-comment' regulation on 'classified information in the public domain.' 'DOE Classification Bulletin WPN-136 on Foreign Nuclear Capabilities' forbids stating what 63.9 percent of Americans already know -- that Israel has a nuclear arsenal."

Also see Smith's piece "Lawsuit Challenges U.S. “Ambiguity” Toward Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal," which states: "Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear analyst James Doyle wrote candidly about Israel’s nuclear weapons for a magazine in 2013. After a congressional staffer read the article, which had passed a classification review, it was referred to classification officials for a second review. Doyle’s pay was then cut, his home computer searched, and he was fired."

Smith also wrote the piece "Poll: Netanyahu Should be Investigated for Nuclear Weapons Tech Smuggling Before U.S. Visit," which states: "In 2012 the FBI declassified and released files (PDF archive) of its investigation into how 800 nuclear weapons triggers were illegally smuggled from the U.S. to Israel. According to the FBI, the Israeli Ministry of Defense ordered nuclear triggers (krytrons), encrypted radios, ballistic missile propellants and other export-prohibited items through a network of front companies. Smuggling ring operations leader Richard Kelly Smyth alleged that Netanyahu worked at one of the fronts -- Heli Trading owned by confessed spy and Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan -- and met with him frequently to execute smuggling operations.

Before a few words regarding the crimes of Enbridge:
What kind of people pay ttentioon to a pack of media weaselcunts who try convict and sentence their state's Governor before the investigation has even begun?
Oregonian weaselcunts, that's who.
When we have Republican Governor signing off of Death Train, the Pacific Connector, oil freight terminals poisoning the Pcific Ocean, When we have the eastern deserts burning coal for thousands of miles around the train tracks, when we have mass extinctions of wildlife, when we have cut the last living tree, killed off every living thing...
Will you be happy then?
You got rid of Kitz, one of our greatest statesmen.
History will spit in your face.

I can't even start to write about the Enbridge pipeline. Have a listen...it's all there.

A Few Global Cultural Treasures We Will Lose For 20 Years Under the TPP
3 days ago
Jeremy Malcolm
Electronic Frontier Foundation

What do Japan's Blue Sky Library, Malaysia's answer to John Wayne, and the first recorded composer from New Zealand, all have in common? They could all disappear from their countries' public domain for the next 20 years, if the current agreement on copyright term extension in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) holds.

You may have read in the news over the past year about how the public domain has recently been enriched with some exciting new additions, such as Sherlock Holmes and—in countries with shorter copyright terms, such as Canada—James Bond, passing out of copyright, freeing them for reissue, adaptation, and remix.

But what you probably haven't heard before is that six of the countries presently negotiating the TPP, and who have reportedly caved in and agreed on copyright term extension, would have been about to contribute cultural icons of their own to the public domain, enriching their own countries and the world with home-grown art, music, and film that is otherwise at risk of being forgotten.

These countries are Brunei, Canada, New Zealand, Malaysia, Japan, and Vietnam. Each of these fascinating countries has such a depth of creative talent that an entire article could easily be devoted to each of them, exploring the public domain works that the world can look forward to—or that we will miss out on for another 20 years, if the TPP passes. But for now, a little taste from each country will have to do.

The Group of Seven were an art movement of the early 20th century whose distinctively Canadian landscape paintings are collected in galleries around Canada and the world. In the United States only one of the members of the group died long enough ago that his works have reached the public domain, but in Canada it is a different story—within a decade, the entire artistic output of the Group of Seven will be freely available to the public, allowing anyone to restore, reproduce and share these timeless masterpieces.

That is, unless the TPP is passed and the term of copyright in Canada is extended. In that case, you can hold your breath for another twenty years.

New Zealand

Since 2010, New Zealanders have finally been able to perform and reuse the works of their most important yet under-appreciated early composer, Alfred Hill, without asking for permission from his estate. Hill was the very first antipodean composer to have a chamber work committed to record, and some of those same precious early recordings have been preserved by the National Archive of Australia, and brought to the world free of copyright restrictions.

Although these crackly old recordings may not seem to be of wide interest in themselves, imagine the potential for these works to be brought back to life in another medium such as film, as the songs of Annette Hanshaw were in Nina Paley's masterful Sita Sings the Blues.

Malaysia and Brunei

Actor, director, writer and composer P. Ramlee is truly a Malaysian superstar, who starred in over 60 movies during Malay filmmaking's golden age in the 1950s and 1960s. He remains a cult figure in Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore—John Wayne may have a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, but Ramlee has an entire street in central Kuala Lumpur. Although he died in 1973, many of his films have already come out of copyright in Malaysia and Brunei, and others continue to do so. An example is Seniman Bujang Lapok (The Three Worn Out Actor Bachelors), a metafictional comedy from 1961 that Ramlee also wrote, directed, and composed for.

A point of note is that in most of the TPP countries (Canada a notable exception), films are protected from the date of publication, not from the death of the author. That makes an enormous difference, when the “author” of a film can include whoever is the longest-lived of the the principal director, the author of the screenplay, the author of the dialogue, and the composer of its soundtrack. This is why so few European films have ever reached the public domain, and why Malaysian and Bruneian film lovers are far more fortunate—for now.

Japan

Just as the United States has its well-known Project Gutenburg that digitizes and distributes public domain literature, so too other TPP countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand have sister projects that focus on works from local authors, as well as those that can legally be made available sooner to residents of those countries that have shorter copyright terms. Japan has such an archive also; the Aozora Bunko, which translates as Blue Sky Library.

Over the last three years, Aozora Bunko has celebrated the release of classic works from authors such as historical novelist Eiji Yoshikawa, philosopher Kiyoshi Miki, and poet Tatsuji Miyoshi. But the curators of the archive are worried about its future, with the shadow of copyright term extension under the TPP, noting that of 572 authors whose works they have published, about half would have to be taken offline if the copyright term is extended retroactively. (Even if not retroactive, the extension of copyright would mean no new Aozora Bunko releases until 2036.)

Vietnam

Under a regime in which copyright in film lasts for 50 rather than 70 years from publication, films made in 1965 are now coming out of copyright. In the case of Vietnam, this of course falls in the middle of the Vietnam War, and for this reason the Vietnamese films of that period, which include both documentaries and dramas, are of immense historical and cultural interest.

Such a film, due to return to the public domain next year, is Nổi gió (Rising Wind), directed by Huy Thành, which jointly won the Golden Lotus award for best feature film at the inaugural Vietnam Film Festival in 1970. Considered as the first movie of Vietnam's revolutionary cinema, and adapted from a play of the same name, it tells the tragic story of a family torn apart by war, from a very different perspective than shown in American films from that period or since.

Why Should Americans Care?

It might be assumed that an extension of the copyright term in the TPP wouldn't affect the United States, because our law already provides for that same copyright term. But although the impact might not be so immediate, the United States would still lose; for one thing, it would lose the flexibility to reduce its own copyright term back to the Berne Convention minimum term of life plus 50 years.

This isn't such an unlikely prospect as you might think. Maria Pallante, Register of Copyrights, wrote in 2013 about her vision of the Next Great Copyright Act, including the suggestion that:

perhaps the law could shift the burden of the last twenty years from the user to the copyright owner, so that at least in some instances, copyright owners would have to assert their continued interest in exploiting the work by registering with the Copyright Office in a timely manner. And if they did not, the works would enter the public domain.

In her draft report for the European Parliament, Julia Reda went further [PDF], suggesting that the European Commission “harmonise the term of protection of copyright to a duration that does not exceed the current international standards set out in the Berne Convention” (ie. 50 years from death). So our lawmakers should not be too hasty in ruling out the future reform of the copyright term, by cementing current law into a multilateral trade agreement.

It is true that the US already has trade deals with other countries that do require a life plus 70 year minimum—but these are largely with countries (such as Jordan, Australia, and Singapore) who were forced into changing their own law as a cost of entry into that agreement, even against the recommendations [PDF] of their own domestic advisers. Those countries would hardly be likely to put up much of a fight if the US acceded to a joint relaxation of the copyright term obligation.

But if the US locks the same obligation into the TPP and TTIP (Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), that dynamic changes, and it will become much more difficult for the United States to reconsider later down the road, without the much more complicated task of coordinating this with both the copyright-maximalist European Commission as well as eleven other countries of the Pacific rim.1

The Good News

So that's the bad news. But there's also some very good news: any of the six countries above can stop this deal! If even one of the countries—Brunei, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand or Vietnam— is brave enough to stand up to the United States and block the extension of the copyright term, then that ill-advised deal could still fall through. If you are from one of those countries, you can call your Member of Parliament, or your trade ministry,2 and demand that they save the public domain, by retaining the life plus 50 year copyright term that is your right under the Berne Convention. If you are in the US, your best avenue to stop term extension, and the TPP's other anti-user threats, is to support our Fast Track action.

On your mark..Get set…BLOW!
Because the Supreme Court this week ruled on the wide of Federal Air Marshall Robert Maclean. What this means for you and I is simply this: it is no longer legal for lawmakers to make laws after the fact. If fyou reveal a serious breach of workplace safety, for example, it is no longer legal for a law to suddenly appear making your actions illegal.
And we have Robert Maclean to thank.
This is a major victory in its implications for future whistleblower cases. The Court’s decision in Department of Homeland Security v. Robert MacLean curtails the government’s manipulation of pseudo-classified information to punish whistleblowers, and strengthens the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA).

In July 2003, TSA alerted all marshals of a possible hijacking plot. Soon after, TSA sent an unclassified, open-air text message to marshals’ cell phones canceling several months of missions to save on hotel costs. Fearing such cancellations in the midst of a hijacking alert created a danger to the flying public, veteran Air Marshal Robert MacLean tried to get TSA to change its decision.

After hitting a dead end, MacLean spoke anonymously to MSNBC, who published a critical story. Only 24 hours later, and after 11 members of Congress voiced concern, TSA reversed itself, putting marshals back on the flights. A year later, MacLean appeared on TV in disguise to criticize agency policies he felt made it easier for passengers to recognize undercover marshals. The TSA recognized MacLean’s voice and discovered he had also released the unclassified 2003 text message. He was fired in April 2006.

MacLean discovered that months after firing him, TSA had retroactively classified as “security sensitive information” (SSI) the unclassified text message he had leaked. SSI is a designation created by TSA via administrative memo, and had no basis in law. TSA decided nonetheless that leaking a retroactively SSI-classified document was cause enough to fire a federal worker. MacLean fought back.

"60 Minutes" reports in "The Swiss Leaks": "The largest and most damaging Swiss bank heist in history doesn't involve stolen money but stolen computer files with more than 100,000 names tied to Swiss bank accounts at HSBC, the second largest commercial bank in the world. A 37-year-old computer security specialist named Hervé Falciani stole the huge cache of data in 2007 and gave it to the French government. It's now being used to go after tax cheats all over the world. '60 Minutes', working with a group called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, obtained the leaked files. They show the bank did business with a collection of international outlaws: tax dodgers, arms dealers and drug smugglers -- offering a rare glimpse into the highly secretive world of Swiss banking."

But it gets better:

Hervé Falciani’s long, strange journey from bank computer expert to jailed fugitive to candidate for office to spokesman for whistleblowers

They almost had him.

On December 22, 2008, Swiss federal police handcuffed 36-year-old Hervé Falciani, a systems specialist they suspected of stealing data from HSBC Private Bank (Suisse), his employer, and trying to sell it to banks in Lebanon. They seized his computer, searched his Geneva home and interrogated him for hours.

Then – on the condition that he return the next day for more questioning – they let him go.

And go he did. Renting a car, Falciani picked up his wife and daughter and drove straight to France. There he began downloading vast amounts of HSBC data that he had stored on remote servers and that has since been causing havoc for wealthy people the world over who use offshore accounts to hide money from taxation: client names and account holdings as well as notes about the bank’s conversations with them.

That day was the pivot point in a long, strange journey for Falciani, a colorful figure who has since moved from country to country on the lam from Swiss authorities – and possibly from criminal elements who mean him harm. He presents himself as a whistleblower and has attracted wide media attention; he even ran unsuccessfully for the European Parliament. He has been known to use an assumed identity, to wear disguises, and to appear in public with bodyguards. He has been jailed – and indicted: In December, the Swiss attorney general charged Falciani with data theft from HSBC, saying his intent was “cashing in.”

Falciani’s HSBC data trove ended up first in the hands of authorities in France, which then indicted London-based HSBC for illegal direct marketing to French nationals, money laundering and facilitating tax fraud.

Waldemar Perez was the speaker last Saturday at Portland Community College. Perez lit into U.S. police militarization in the post 9/11 political landscape. Perez, an engineer and member of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, has recently directed his focus toward the unsettling outcome of the 9/11 attacks including the continued trend of U.S. police militarization, the erosion of civil liberties and the unending war on terror.

Perez’s first of a two-part presentation will occur February 7th at 3:00 PM on PCC’s Sylvania campus in Room 108 of the Sciences and Technology building. The second part is entitled “9/11 and the Geopolitical Aftermath, A Global Agenda”, which will occur March 7th at the same time and place. PCC 9/11 Studies Club is an education and outreach effort serving students, faculty and the community. Their current mid-term lecture and discussion series is entitled “9/11, Look for Yourself”. All meetings are free of charge and open to the public every Saturday at 3:00 PM at the same location.

It’s all there; the rest of the world knows; Americans have opted out of their own truth, bought into the “official report” and paid for it with surrender to the USA Patriot Act: it’s all there…

It's the Quote of the Week... We stand here beneath a warm, wet winter, helpless before the disaster we have caused.

"Global Justice Ecology Project’s Ruddy Turnstone from Florida remarks, “ArborGen and the government may think they have won this round, but there is already a huge anti-GMO movement. There are also forest protection groups, Indigenous Peoples, birders, foresters, scientists, parents, hikers, and many others who do not want the forests contaminated by GE trees. A great many of them will take action to ensure these trees are never planted.”

In 2013, when the USDA called for public comments on another ArborGen request to commercialize a GE Eucalyptus tree (a decision still pending), they received comments at the rate of 10,000 to one opposing the industry request. By simply refusing to regulate this new GE pine, the USDA has cut the public out of the process completely. In 2013, a conference on Tree Biotechnology in Asheville, NC was disrupted for its entire 5 days by anti-GE tree activists, and there were multiple arrests.

The Campaign to STOP GE Trees is an international alliance of organizations mobilized to protect forests and biodiversity and to support communities threatened by the dangerous release of genetically engineered trees into the environment."

1) that's cool, man. you support community-based radio based solely on your dedication to one weekly half-hour show. that demonstrates that Theresa's voice represents/intrigues you (and many, many others); however you don't feel represented by any one of the other 500 people who volunteer their time and energy in the 24/7 endevour, and you don't value the input (and miraculous existence!) of the other 5-10,000 members and ten times as many listeners; neither do you support the KBOO mission of including as many underrepresented voices as possible on the air, with natural turnover, schedule changes and opportunities as new people arrive. Membership gives you the power to affect the decision-making, which is why you gave money to Theresa via KBOO; and, by golly, you will do everything in your power to keep her on the air, and you want the KBOO website visitors to know how you feel when they read the comments. You'd even like them to join you in your fight.

2) wow.

my opinion

Personally, Theresa's show is one of my favourites and there are plenty of shows that I not only don't like or don't listen to, but also complain about out loud. It's my radio station, and, like my family, I will not be quiet when they need to shape up or ship out.

writing inflammatory statements on the webpage will remain simply that: inflammatory statements with a reaction or two from trolls (see the 20 pages of Anonymous written about me because of the audio I submitted that Jenka edited), which, in the end, result in: NOTHING. If you want to chat with others online, that's fine, but you should know that nothing said here is considered in the Committee meetings. It's just an informal public forum, not policy binding.

my advice

Instead of threatening us (volunteers, members, listeners and our very existence), why not use your valuable internet time to phrase it as, for example, a question to which one of us could easily respond: "Have there been any changes to Theresa's show? I noticed lately that it has been preemented or even cut. It is my favourite show. [I fear Air Cascadia will take its place--not necessary but very telling that you chose Chris' page to write it--ed.]. " You can copy the question to Theresa's email (though I know from experience she doesn't respond) and/or print it out and put it in her cubby hole at the station. And/or show up to the meetings. And/or call Theresa during her show--she takes calls, you know. Ask her if she'll train or mentor you to do the same kind of work she does.

p.s. Air Cascadia basically is the AM News is Chris Andreae: i was engineering {i'm flattered that you liked it}and was very sad when it was cut--but that is the way of the station; we adhere and adapt to the ever-fluctuating needs of the larger community--but i watched, with great pleasure, as it morphed into Air Cascadia. Though i adore Dennis Bernstein, 15 less minutes of his voice is no skin off my back.

im a conservative right wing trucker and i think cris andrae is the greatest broadcaster on the radio. i try to listen when i dont need traffic reports.
her scathing commentary is the best. i would join kboo but i fear america will become too weak and barry will force me to find a green job soon . keep up the good work
michael j

The anchor news program Democracy Now, conveiniently aired at 11 AM so that all could tune in was moved to 7 AM with a result that most if not all of the people who work nights won't be tuning in as they are still sleeping. Also missed the 40th anniversary bash as it was inconveinently held from 4 to 10 Pm, on a weekday, which would exclude anyone working swing from attending unless they took a day off. Why couldn't this have been held on a Saturday or Sunday?
Air Cascadia is a very rough and unpolished program that leaves me tuning to OPB or just turning it off.
The choppy, emergent voice of Cris Andreae is certainly a large part in that.
If it is true that Press Watch will be axed for this then it will be an easy decision to withhold future pledges from this listener.